Things to leave behind in 2014

I am aware that it has been 2014 for two weeks now, but on the precipice of any new year, many of us are slow out of the gate as the rusty cogs of our brains creak into gear; oiled up by the increased workday coffee intake.

A new year, for many, is viewed as a fresh, new blank page in their lives. Besides the mandatory hangover, January 1 is a date of the dreaded “R” word. I am not a firm believer in January 1 and its supposed magic that will turn me into a better human being. Nor am I fond of the people who do, who incite rage in me every time I see the phrase: “New Year, new me” on social media. Actually let’s begin our list with that.

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“New Year, new me” and other clichéd slogans

Stop saying this. The more you say it, the less it’s true unless you really are accomplishing your resolutions, which is awesome but you’re making us all hate you if you constantly go on about it (unless that was your resolution too). What’s worse, is the person isn’t changing at all for the better but becoming ever-more self-absorbed. I find these are the people who are addicted to Instagramming mini-cupcake pictures AKA being passive aggressive to their own stomachs.

Drawing/tattooing mustaches on your fingers

It’s one thing to draw one on your face or buy those fun caterpillar-like ones from the party shop. I looked this up and found, to my complete lack of surprise, they have their own name; the cringingly bad and obvious, “fingerstache.” They seem to have died down meaning those who still do it should have stopped in 2010. My thoughts go out to the parents and friends who know of people who have this tattoo.

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Juicings and gym bunnies

Aside from all the engagement photos I see on social media (which is lovely and I would not want people not to get engaged or celebrate their love), people seem to be in steady relationships with their gyms and juicers. What exactly this is about, I don’t know, but if I have to see a new photo up of someone’s swampy home-made juice that looks just like the one they posted yesterday, I will start to wonder about their sanity. Tying into that is the classic gym bunny obsession, where they simply must take a multitude of photos of their gym machines, workout regime and gym outfits. How one manages to apply full make-up at 6 in the morning for a run is beyond my realm of understanding.

Apple products obsession

I understand Steve Jobs was an extremely smart and innovative person. True, he was a complicated and arrogant man but a 98.3 billion dollar empire that knocked Coca-Cola off its top spot last year is not to be sniffed at. This would be fine if most Apple users weren’t such insufferable tools. Like a popular sports team, there is a golden age where the fan is basking in all the glory of being at the top of the heap; the iPhone’s interface, screen, browsing, media and camera were revolutionary. Now, iPhones 4 and 5 have been lacklustre, with Nokia and Samsung providing the bigger screens, sharper cameras and better features. Apple is still a very lucrative corporation and provides great technology, although the obsessed Apple fan is still ready to get into a nerdy mudslinging match with anyone who may prefer Android like it’s 2007.

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“A thousand likes and I can get…”

Chain-letters have an equally annoying cousin. While we feel obligated to “like” certain things out of respect to our friends on Facebook, often the campaigns make us despair in who we have befriended. “1000 likes and I can get a free pair of sneakers” or “1000 likes and I can get a free photo-shoot” do not help to cultivate friendships. There are ways to get free stuff without causing people to want to block you. Try a caption competition or subscribing to something; don’t be lazy.

And in top place: Remakes, biopics and sequels

Uproxx’s Vince Mancini wrote a stellar piece on what Hollywood needs to stop doing in 2014. Looking at the box office over the last year has shown us that franchises make money simply by “showing up;” Eight of the tenhighest-grossing movies of 2013 were either sequels or reboots. Instead of in-depth filmmaking, Hollywood cannot be trusted not to squeeze every bit of juice out of a once thriving concept. Case in point, after the success of the fantastic, The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit was made; which needlessly became a trilogy. Biopics, coincidentally enough like Jobs, have turned into easy ideas for a movie, resulting in some dodgy casting (Ashton Kutcher) and events of the person’s life given creative licence steroids.